english literature used to be the number one choice of colleges. it is now not even in the top 70. >> that is because it was easy. >> and so if you don't have those skills you're not learning the skills about how right at all, let alone biographies or inaugurals. it is going to be a dying art. >> time will tell. if i can say, make the last point, have the last word if i can take the part of of the interview. still here writing these long bare face and actually will be, i suspect. we have accomplished something very great. he really have can shed a life, a very complex life of a difficult person and managed to do this with not only all of the skills of

the biographer, the narrative and the documentation and the researchers, but with the thing that the biographer needs above all, and that is empathy. i felt great empathy for her and she was so difficult in some ways. but i congratulate you. thank you all for being here >> that means a lot. [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> upstairs and by both of these books and find out what really happened. [inaudible conversations] >>

interested in american history? watch american history int television on c-span3 every weekend. 48 hours of people and events that help document the american story. visit c-span.org/history for more information. >> charles johnson is up next on booktv. he spoke about his book, "why coolidge matters." at the eagle forum collegians leadership summit here in washington d.c. this is about half an hour. >> charles e. johnson and his new book is called "why coolidge matters: leadership lessons from america's most underrated president." charles is an investigative journalist and author and a former contributor to the daily caller. he has just launched got news.com last week, and he hasp spent a lot of -- he has spent a lot of time talking about that mississippi race.

he has written for "the wall street journal", claremont review and national review online and the weekly standard. charles johnson's work on exposing corruption and fraud in elections, government and federal policy has placed him on several national shows and networks as well as numerous talk radio programs including i just was listening to a news conference this morning that he was pretty exciting, so please welcome charles johnson. [applause] >> thank you for having me. thank you so much for having me. i know there are a lot of questions on mississippi, and we can get to those. you can -- i know that there are a lot of people who potentially don't like me because of things i've tweeted, and we'll get into that. we can smack it around. i know there are a lot of establishment people and not establishment people and all the various permutations. but for the moment, because i've been asked to people about this and also because it's awesome, i'm talking about my book "why coolidge matters." now, you might ask, like, which a lot of people would, why would

somebody in their 20s write a book about the last red-headed president? [laughter] it seems like a strange thing to do. and why would somebody in their 20s write about a president who was around in the 1920s. there's this other cool inbook, right? amity shlaes who has a certain perspective on coolidge. i have a different one. and by the way, this book is one of three who has been endorsed by ted cruz, who i hope might be another president in the future. history matters, and there's so much about our history that we, those of us on the right know that isn't so, as reagan put it, and ought to know but don't because left controls our curriculums and, essentially, controls our minds. now, coolidge, why is coolidge entering in coolidge -- interesting in coolidge lived in a time in which there were riots, there were all these questions about immigration, there were fights with public sector unions, there were fights about the very nature of

government. there were fights over education, how should our colleges look, what should they be teaching? and he won on every one of these issues. he actually transformed the nature of government. and he used things as this very shy, kind of dry wit of a man used the technology of his time, radio, to go and get his message out to the whole country. he was the first president to appear on radio. excuse me, to appear on television, on film. they didn't have television yet this those days -- in those days. and he's the first president -- the last president, rather, to write his own speeches. and we know that a young man somewhere in the midwest was listening to him on the radio and he actually decided that he would go into radio because of what he heard from calvin coolidge. that man, of course, was ronald reagan. and ronald reagan, of course, took coolidge's portrait and hung it in the oval office. he was criticized. people condemned reagan for doing this. after all, coolidge was the do-nothing president, right?

that's what people told us, right? it's basically like woodrow wilson, he's awesome, right? world war i, expansion of government, cool. and then they go into, like, oh, that -- those terrible republicans who used the market, and they basically made mom and pop starve to death, right? that was the whole, like, great depression. republicanses gave us the great depression. let me contend that that is entirely garbage. and we can go into exactly why. i go into it at length in my book, but essentially, coolidge is the last president to pay down the debt, he's the last president to actually, to massively -- during the 1920s one of the most expansionist times in human, in human flourishing, right? we've got literacy rates are increasing, women are actually involved in the workplace, coolidge is at the same time that fdr is insisting that photos of himselfs with blacks be destroyed, coolidge is partying at the negro league's baseball games. he joins, he signs a law that makes native americans citizens,

and not just makes them citizens, but at the same time he joins native american tribes because his argument is if they can join our tribe, i should be able to join their tribe. so we have a long, proud history with coolidge, and it's my contention that american history runs essentially from, runs essentially from the founders through lincoln, lincoln to coolidge, and we can debate lincoln ad nauseam. i am, of course, of the claremont school which many of you i recommend that you read the claremont review of books. and what essentially happens is lincoln, then coolidge, then reagan, then the tea party movement and then potentially cruz or rand or whatever, pick your poison. and that's my kind of contention on history. now, i am a believing christian. coolidge was a believer as well. he was actually one of our most religious presidents. he colored a lot of his speeches with religious allusions, and he made this argument which i think

is essential right now for conservatives to grasp which is that man has a spiritual nature. if you touch the spiritual nature, you can actually transform government. and i know there are a lot of people probably scoffing libertarian friends who are reading ayn rand and are atheists or whatever, but nonetheless, i think this is true. this is why coolidge was able to give speeches in all different audiences and actually have a win, sizable majorities of ethnic groups that had previously never voted -- that have not voted republican since coolidge. and so i think that this kind of approach to politics, as coolidge liked to put it, you shall know the truth and it shall set you free, this kind of approach is actually essential for people who are of limited government mindsets. it might surprise grow that one of our most -- you that one of our most religious presidents was actually the last one to trim and cut government. and he gave a lot of arguments. in this kind of miss with our ideas of the compassionate

conservatives or libertarians were all at war with one another. it's not quite the case. now, i'm happy to kind of go into coolidge. i'm also happy to go into mississippi senate race. let me say a few things. i've actually been to mississippi, right? how many people have been just by a show of hands. right? good. so you're not all sucked into the beltway. this is good. what i would say is that i was -- if you saw the racist, heard the racist radio ads, if you heard the robocall, if you saw the fliers, these are all things i found when i was in mississippi. i was invited to go down by the tea party express to embed with them. had a bunch of mint juleps, had a good old time, but i was noting what was going on in mississippi and it december gusted me because -- disgusted me because this was a stolen election. there's a lot of stanley stuff l continue to come out. you're reading my tactics are unorthodox, right? they're probably a little

strange. who sets up a go fund me account and encourages people to give him money, some of which he uses to bribe a reverend to tell them about allegations of voter fraud. kind of a weird thing to do, right? but let me submit that there's a lot of stuff that the conservative movement for a long time has played, and they played by certain marcus of queensbury rules, and they've been losing. in fight after fight, we've been losing, and the country reflects our losing. and state after state, you know, county after county, place after place we lose. and so what we have to do is start thinking strategically. i was a competitive chess player in high school. i played poker, helped pay my way through college playing poker. we need to start being strategic and having fun. and so there's a certain sense to which those of us who are young in the room, we have a certain way in which we can actually change things in this cub country. and after all, it's going to fall to us. a lot of folks out there now are too invested in the system the way it is, and it's going to

fall to those of us who have camera phones, the james o'keefes of the world, the hannah jiels, the dearly departed andrew breitbarts of the world who think outside the box to solve problems. i have a lot of material on menendez that's yet to come, i intend to continue because i believe journalists should first and foremost be after truth and after justice, so i'll continue to help law enforcement as necessary. and i have been, have been in contact with the sec, and my friend rick over there in the back, he and i were in front of the national media today doing a press conference showing how the nrsc and how a number of establishment conservative organizations were violating sec rules with what they were doing in mississippi. and all of this started coming out. i commend that you come to gotnews.com. i will actually pay you, unlike other places. i actually believe in freedom and money and actually, like, you know, if you do the work, you should probably be paid a just became. i know this is a novel concept for a lot of interns.

i promise you, it gets better. but with that, i'll take some questions. anything, hit me. whatever you've got, any rumors you heard, let's go. anything. anyone? yes. if you say your name just so you can be facebook friends, you can follow me @chuckcjohnson. >> on coolidge, he's up known as the do-nothing president, and conservatives like that on his domestic policy, but on foreign policy for right or wrong, he's remembers foreign policy primarily for the pact which outlawed war. obviously, didn't go too well. and generally at times isolationist. so if you want to talk about his foreign policy ideas. >> yes. great question. there's a chapter in my book dedicated on this topic. you should all buy it, i'll even give you a discount on it because i like all of you, and i'm grateful for being here. this is a great question. there's this attitude that the 19 tos -- 1920s, basically, they cut the government, they cut the defense department, and

that's what gave us world war ii. i don't subscribe to that view. first of all, it's historically wrong. there was this pact that did, you know, pretend to outlaw war. but coolidge was very clear at the time this was signed that you can't outlaw war any more than you can legislate peace. he thought this was a ridiculous idea. he nevertheless thought what needed to happen after world war i was military reductions, and he encouraged the japanese, the british, he encouraged the french also to follow international arbitration agreements to reduce -- remember, he doesn't have world war ii yet, so this hasn't yet happened. so everyone's reducing naval armaments, and by and large it's working until people start to realize, oh, looks like the japanese and the british are cheating. so what is cool in's final act? to sign a bill authorizing the first aircraft carrier, also to authorize the first cruisers. and he was not, he was of the view when it comes to military

intervention that as john quincy adams put it, that we are the friends of liberty everywhere but custodian only of our own. i think a lot of our conservative, neoconservative friends have this idea that we need to be militarily involved in countries where we do not know the culture, the way of life in order to have our foreign policy advanced. i don't hold that view. i'm of the angelo codevilla school. if you've read some of his stuff, i highly recommend it. i'm of the view that a strong united states is not necessarily a united states that intervenes militarily in every country. coolidge is of that view as well. and so he would get involved, and he did get involved in a number of skirmishes in mexico, in the caribbean. and so he was not kind of a do-nothing kind of military type. he was very loved and respected by the military. and so he had a record that was quite successful on this front. now, as for what came afterwards, i mean, arguably --

so you can google this, it's true, my grandfather was a rare admiral, dwight johnson, navy cross winner. there were a number of people in the '30s that took this position that there's this view that disarmament occurred because, basically, we didn't have -- there weren't big enough armies in europe, right? this is a common idea. turns out bruce borton and a bunch of other military strategists have written it's totally not true. the german army was much smaller than the french army. disarmament was more of a mental thing than a strategic positioning thing. and so what worries me about the united states right now is we can militarily have a much more efficient military. i mean, i've talked to erik prince of blackwater fame, and he said, look, i can build you a helicopter resupply mission that takes out 76 people and do it with four people. i can build you a leaner, meaner

military if you so choose. he did it, you know, with blackwater. he did the fedex solution to the military. those of us who believe in the military, we have to understand the purpose is to secure the constitution of the united states and to make sure we all live as free people, right? as a free people. not to go into savage lands is and throw lots of money at defense contractors and waste a lot of that money, get a lot of stuff wrong, get a lot of people killed and go and start blood wars. i'll give you a perfect example of this stupidity. you guys have seen zero dark thirty, right? who's seen it? a lot of people, right? there's a scene in which, you know, they're coming -- a lot of people have written about this. i know this is far afield from your question, but i'm trying to answer it in my round about, rapid-fire way. what happens is they go, there's a scene in which the cia woman is blown up by this guy who, you know, has explosives in his car. what they don't tell you in real life that guy for two years was selecting all of the drone

targets. and so he was telling us to go assassinate people who are against his tribe's interests. so what we were doing was we were the garbage disposal service for one tribe against another. what bothered me the most was our intelligence was so lacking. and what i would say is those of us who do believe in a strong defense, we also have to understand that information is probably our most powerful weapon in the kind of new age. and i think coolidge understood that. he understood that warfare was changing radically. he was one of the first people to understand that the future of war was going to be fought from the air, so he was very friendly to people like mitchell and others who kind of understood as technology changes, battlefields change as well. and i think that's something we on the right need to be very aware of in the future because be, frankly, we can't afford $900 hammers anymore. it's just not possible. it's not the right thing to do. it's immoral, and it's a waste of taxpayers' limited resources. so, yes, next question. >> right here, jordan. >> hi. i'm jordan henry from missouri.

and i know you are exactly right. in my public high school,ap history class the general consensus on coolidge by our teacher was, you know, okay, he didn't do too much, so let's hurry up and blame the republicans on the great depression so we can get to world war ii. so what was it that first got you interested in studying so in depth this forgotten president? >> well, first of all, there are only like 34 books on cool in, so it's like, all right, i'm just going to read all those. and what did it for me which was the -- >> as opposed to lincoln. [laughter] >> yeah. as opposed to lincoln. this is not well-trod ground. there's a reason that this, you know -- and what was weird to me was that he was ridiculously popular when he was president. people minted coins out of him, they wanted him to run again in 1928. why is it that all these people believe one thing about coolidge, and all the people who are alive including the 100-year-old lady i met who voted for him, why is it they

were all so pro-coolidge? what actually happened with the depression? and it's my contention that the depression is a function of many different things. one thing it's a function of was big government republicans. there was this view that the republican party -- shocker, oh, shocker -- was split into two factions. one faction was very much an establishment faction that wanted to just manage everything. their attitude was we need a businessman to lead, an executive to lead our party. that's the herbert hoover faction. then there was another faction which was we need a constitutional conservative, a guy who really believes in the declaration of independence which was central to cool in's thinking. he really -- coolidge's thinking. his christian view was as we all have a common father in god, the father, therefore, we're all brothers. any form of government in which i try to enslave you or you try to ensleaf my, be it in the form of world war sr., be it slavery,

be it indentured servitude, all of that is against god's wish for all of us. and i go into some length on his christian faith, why that was so important to what he was trying to do. but what happened with the republican party is it was split ideologically x they realized they could not actually defeat the woodrow wilson faction, unpopular though it was, until they kind of come wind factions -- combined factions. so coolidge was very much a part of combining that funk. nevertheless, he recognized while herbert hoover was his commerce secretary, herbert hoover also was not necessarily about the kind of politically small c conservative declaration of independence approach to things. on the contrary. he said, he dismissively referred to him as his wonder boy. for six years that man has given me unsolicited advice, all of it bad, and he refused to endorse him until the last possible moment which was never done at the time. until the last possible moment, he refused to endorse him.

now, why? because herbert hoover was a mining executive, a big government, he believed in sort of the progressive mindset that businessmen can run things better, right? as if we are all just kind of cogs in a machine. and so coolidge wuss very much a-- was very much opposed to that. so the commerce secretary -- how am i doing on time? >> you're doing fine. >> all right, good. i have a lot to say, and so i try to say it quick. the commerce secretary at the time, herbert hoover, expanded the government massively in his own department. and many of the things that he did in the 1930s when he was president -- excuse me, from '28 until '32, it was fdr-like. and there was no, there was no distinction between what fdr wanted to do, philosophical distinction between what fdr wanted to do and herbert hoover wanted to do. it was just more like that. kind of like bush and obama when it comes to things like t.a.r.p.

there was no philosophical distinction. obviously, the wig crash happened. the crash of 1920 was actually much larger than the crash of 1929 just as, like, an actual, you know, observable fact on the stock market. and so there were a lot of people who thought, oh, we'll just bounce back from this. after all, the recession of 1920 was pretty bad. but what do we do? we cut taxes and government after the war, economy came back, we had the roaring '20s. herbert hoover increased the smoot-holly tariff that actually made the depression bigger, and it's my contention that the great in great depression is a function of fdr's kind of insane policies when it comes to interest rates and government spending and when it comes to the climate of uncertainty he created and the demonization he did of business. and if that sounds familiar, i encourage you to open up a newspaper such as we have newspapers now today. but, yeah, any other questions?

>> oh, come on. >> no mississippi questions? >> lincoln has a question. >> yeah. i've got -- >> what's your name? >> lincoln carper, i'm from st. louis, missouri. >> awesome name. >> i was going to ask you real quickly before mississippi, what kind of poker did you play? >> texas hold 'em, of course. what is this omaha sill hiness? like, no. >> is that how you're going to fund your college education in. >> i don't recommend that. [laughter] i don't recommend that, by the way. i would just say that it's a lot of fun, and i discovered at one point that it's wrong, you know, i've since kind of sullied on poker because i think it is wrong to take people's money, like, in that capacity. it's much more fun to do research on rhinos and hunt them for sport. [laughter] that's what i would say on that score. [laughter] >> yeah. i passed the idea by my mom, and she wasn't too happy. i was going to ask you about mississippi. for those of us who maybe aren't familiar with your work, summarize some of the work you

have dope there and tell us what exactly going there for those of us who are less well informed than we should be. >> we all know there's a controversial election that just took place. >> i think we are. >> okay, good. so i'm going to start there, and then we'll expand. so, basically, what ended up happening is thad cochran, who is 76 years old, he's a little worse for the wear, you may have seen that story the other day about him going to the democrat lunch. there's a lot of questions about his mental health and mental capacity, and he's running against chris mcdaniel, was running against him for the republican nomination to represent mississippi in the united states senate. now, what happened? what happened was that there was a concerted effort on the part of the haley barbour political machine, former rnc chair, one of the most successful lobbyists in the united states, he's represented a number of dictatorships as a lobbyist. and i posted all this on twitter. you can go and see the documents

for yourself. and he's former governor of mississippi. and as ed rollins, you know, another political consultant once put it, haley barbour owns mississippi, and he used that owns statement. now, this offends me just as a human being and as an american that one man can own a state. i mean, after all, these are our fellow citizens, and that seems wrong. so what i decided to do was i decided to see what was going on in mississippi. after all, i like to bust corruption, and if you're the most corrupt state in the union, then the journalist who likes to bust corruption should go to the most corrupt state. it seemed logical to me. so i got this invitation by the tea party express to go and talk about my book on coolidge. i had never met chris mcdaniel before. certain press reports have identified me as a mcdaniel supporter. i'm not a big fan of his. i'm not against him, but i'm not for him. i'm not even registered to vote because, frankly, like, i live in california, and it doesn't really matter, and it seems like a lot of work just to get up and

vote. maybe that'll change, but i'm not even registered to vote. what really interests me is busting corruption. so i go to mississippi, and i start seeing all these fliers everywhere and hearing about these threiers in the black community. they start saying chris mcdaniel is a klansman, and he's going to take away your government benefits, shut down historically black colleges. you name the most absurd, racist things democrats have said about you, now the republican establishment is saying it about chris mcdaniel. so, naturally, i thought he was awesome. i felt like if they're really this targeted towards him, this must be something there that they're afraid of and what is it, right? because they're not actually talking about the issues. so what they tried to do was they tried to get a whole number of african-american voters, and they ran a whole bunch of racist radio ads and robocalls. you've probably seen those around. i found all of those and posted them online.

people thought i made them up, i didn't make them up. rick back there tracked down all of the different call stations and found out who the people were that were paying for all these. all these ads were produced by all-white firms. so they have this black guy come on with this jazzy voice in the background. by the way, we haven't released who funded all of them, but we do know right now, right now i can publicly say the national republican and senator to have y'all committee is using money to go and produce these ads to go and target black voters to scare them. and what they're not telling them is that if you vote as a democrat in the primary, so in the primary on june 3rd, and then vote as a republican in the runoff, that's an illegal vote. so what they're doing is they're scaring all these poor black people, many of them very poor in the delta and elsewhere. these are our fellow citizens, right? they're scaring them with

accusations that chris mcdaniel's going to come, you know, for them and that he is quite literally a klansman, he's going to bring back jim crow. and that's the kind of campaign that i thought was really disgusting. now, why are they doing that, right? that's the interesting question. i mean, after all, there are lots of senate races. why be so focused on that? let me suggest that thad cochran is going -- should the republicans take the united states senate, thad cochran is going to be chief appropriator. he's going to be the head of appropriations. now, if you're the chief lobbyist who owns a state, the most corrupt state in the country, it helps to have the head appropriator in your corner. so that's kind of the why do this kind of thing. now, what happened? what happened, and i posted all the documentation. i have all mississippi wired, all this mississippi housewives. like, i will say, hey, go get this document for me, and

somebody will drive four and a half hours and get it for me. people are so angry at what happened here. what happened is a whole number of democrats crossed over and voted. i know you're probably going to say, oh, this is politics, politics is an ugly business, you know, this is terrible, but, you know, how likely is widespread voter fraud? well, there are ab awful lot of -- an awful lot of people who have come out with allegations that are substantive, who have a lot of documentation supporting these statements, who -- there's a lot more that will come out. through the vote is suing -- we've seen a lot of what was going on, essentially, in county after county is that all the little counties are controlled by the barbour machine, and in each one of these counties they were just east ignoring the laws in some cases, so they were allowing people who had voted as a democrat to vote in a republican runoff which you're not supposed to do, they were destroying pages, they would show that people had voted previously which is like a big

felony, and they were running around with ab accept tee ballot forms and lying to people and registering as many people as possible. and so right now, so the separation is 5900 votes. excuse me, 6900 votes. that that's the separation between these two candidates. and we have, i mean, overwhelmingly the republicans voted for mcdaniel in the republican primary. and so this is going to continue to be contested, litigated, there's a lot more stuff that's going to come out x. i intend to post all of it at got job news.com. come write for me, let's change the country, let's change the world. and my basic attitude about this is this corruption needs to be called out, because if we don't stop it here, if we don't draw a line in the sand -- and, by the way, lots of people are i drawing this line. ted cruz found it appalling which you better believe that the ted cruz people are going to use this as a differentiation

point when they run against rand paul in 2016. you know, we had ed martin of the missouri gop, the chair there, say that it's repug anticipate, there should be a full investigation. many people have also called for any vendors that did this kind of work. we've gone into the minutiae about the fec violations of having pacs do senatorial work, and there's a lot more stuff that's coming out. so if you want to help, i can also pay you to help me -- >> okay, we have one more question from the back. >> yeah, yeah. sorry about that. >> avery. >> hi, hannah stevens from michigan. i was just wondering, you said that you're just not registered to vote, but you're so deeply involved in politics, why do you not exercise your right to vote -- >> i totally agree with you. my wife is an immigrant. she votes, and she likes to vote. i worked as a precinct worker in boston before i moved to fresno, california. you can come out and join me. we can go, you know, do that

kind of thing. it's a very serious question. i would just basically put it this way: i love my country, i'm involved in the political process. one of the reasons i don't want vote is i've had a number of death threat saying people would literally cut my head off, like literally, like, you know? [laughter] and i was told by a law enforcement contact when i did some work with the fbi that i should do as much as possible. so i live in a gated community, i have a gun in every room of my house, and my wife has a different maiden name, so i should do as much as possible to avoid detection. and so that's a big reason i don't want vote. now -- i don't vote. now, i have voted in the past. i did vote in the last election because i was going to move for where i move now. i did vote for leland yi, just because it was funny. generally speaking, i'm very supportive of the right to vote.

but we all have comparative advantages that we have to make, and i intend to go after corrupt republicans as i have with thad cochran. i'm not interested in being part of a political tribe. my christian views are such that you shall know the truth, and it shall set you free. i'm not interested in being, you know, i believe in principles over parties and over people. and i think registering to vote anding with a part of -- and being a part of a republican machine while it's fun for a lot of people and i think it's important, honestly, my value added, like i don't want even leave the house to get food. i'm working all the time from six a.m. to nine p.m. my wife literally pulls me away so we can go on date night. this is the cause of my life. i'm happy to work as long as necessary. and i really, i don't want to sully the kind of aggressive, go after the truth message that i'm bringing by being a part of a